


the furthest city light

by sithblood



Category: Men's Football RPF
Genre: Character Study, Christmas, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-25 18:14:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17126303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sithblood/pseuds/sithblood
Summary: Dele used to think that being famous meant you never had to be alone, especially at Christmas. He now knew that being famous meant you were still as lonely as you had been before, just in a more expensive flat.





	the furthest city light

This was the third Christmas film he’d watched today. Fourth, if you counted Bridget Jones, but he didn’t. Four was bordering on problematic. On screen, Kevin slapped both palms against his cheeks and screamed. On the sofa, Dele shifted, moving the ice pack as it slipped down the damp skin of his thigh.

 

Christmas had always been an interesting time of the year, growing up. It was easy to feel connected to everyone else when family wasn’t part of the conversation, when the only thing you had in common was homework and girls and the game you all watched last Saturday. December lay hazy, heavy, mosaic-like in his mind, a month of crafted cards signed to nobody, washing-up sitting, stagnant, in the sink, two weeks spent alone because everyone else was on a holiday he wouldn’t have been able to afford. Becoming famous had meant, among other things, that he would never have to be by himself.  

 

It hadn’t gotten properly light today, as it was wont to do sometimes, deep into the throes of English winter. His flat was lit from within – he’d even turned the Christmas tree lights on, which he didn’t usually bother with unless there was company – but the grey of the street and sky still seeped inwards, slipping through the cracks between his windows. He felt that if he were to look outside, the London he knew wouldn’t be looking back. He felt like getting piss-drunk.

 

It was midday, so the boys would probably be half-way through training by now, depending on Poch’s schedule. Maybe they were eating lunch, loud and buoyant and still glowing from the win. Maybe they were running sprints.

 

The thing about Jordan was that he was really fucking competitive. He’d apologised after the game, but Dele wasn’t sure how much of it he had meant, and if he had just been sorry that Everton had lost. He was a great guy, when he was playing on your team. A muscle in Dele’s thigh jumped, painfully; the image of a yellow shirt, of turf and sky, of advertising boardings flashing in bright technicolour drifted back to him, lethargic and unwelcome. He’d almost cried, sat on one of the medical beds in the Everton changing rooms, with physios taping up his leg and telling Poch that it would be better if he came off at half time, yeah, really, there’s no need to risk it. Injured, again. Merry fucking Christmas.

 

Beside him, his phone buzzed. On screen, Kevin stole a toothbrush.

 

_Feeling sorry for yourself?_

 

Eric would be annoying if he wasn’t also right, most of the time. Usually he was just irritating in real life, but since he’d had to go and get operated on for almost fucking dying of appendicitis, he’d become insufferable over text, too. It didn’t help that he typed like an old man, with proper grammar and everything.

 

_u wish. gaffer says its not serious anyway so at least i wont be out for long u freeloader._

 

Dele smiled thinly and added four green dollar emojis for good measure, just because they annoyed Eric. He hadn’t been outside properly for days and his body ached for it, edged keenly towards the suggestion of movement wherever possible.

 

_You make it sound like it was my fault. The recovery’s going well by the way, thanks for asking. They might let me go home before Christmas._

 

This was the bit where things became a little more uncertain. Sometimes, Dele thought of himself in parts, as a series of separate people caught between time and history, pressed between the folds of the past. They were usually always looking for something, and they were usually always unsatisfied. If the Dele Alli of his childhood were here, staring down at the phone screen, he would block the number and take a cold shower and think about anything and anybody but Eric. If the Dele Alli who first signed for Spurs three years ago were here, he would say something witty and sarcastic and unkind that would steer the conversation back into familiar, friendly territory. On screen, Kevin and the man who shovelled ice out of the road sat in Church, listening to carols. Dele sighed, ran his tongue over his teeth, and typed out a reply.

 

_glad youre feeling better, altho who even gets appendicitis these days lol. what are you up to for xmas??_

 

Dele locked his phone then unlocked it again, staring at the _delivered_ which turned into a _read at 12:34 pm_ which turned into three dots blinking up at him in a grey text bubble. He thought about Christmas at home, with his dad always travelling from one foreign country to the next and his mum out cold upstairs and the turkey uncooked in the fridge, BBC’s Christmas Day specials playing out a sad loop to an audience of one, Chris Rea and Band-Aid and Frank Sinatra floating through the radio static into their empty kitchen, eating microwave meals or takeaway for dinner while his mother slept, sound, in a dark room with the heating switched on. He thought about Christmas with the Hickfords and opening stockings in the living room and playing charades and pulling crackers and having to laugh when one of them told an inside joke they’d thought up before he’d moved in with them, taking photos for the mantlepiece and not looking right next to them all, too dark and too lanky and too serious, watching them hug each other in the evening when they thought he wasn’t looking and physically hurting for something like that, a family like that. Beside him, Dele’s phone buzzed.

 

_Not a lot, the family are coming down day before Xmas eve, probably just staying in and eating as much food as I can. You want to come over Xmas day?_

 

Twelve year old Dele pushes away and nineteen year old Dele pushes back and every version of every person he’s ever been, the sum of all his parts and pasts and memories, tells him to say no, tells him to stay closed, stay alone, think of his career, think of football, think of the future. There was no place for a boy like him in this line of work so he’d shaped, changed, become exactly what everyone else wanted to see in him and nothing less, nothing more. The Dele Alli who played in the Premier League and had photo-shoots on the covers of fashion magazines and won awards and dived for penalties and swore on the pitch and leaked a sex-tape was a mirror, a wishing-well, a reflection of expectation and projection and desire worn like a cloak around the reality of his own, sad self. Dele read Eric’s reply again and unlocked his phone. He was sick and fucking tired of always looking for something he could never find, always being unsatisfied with what he had. So what if he liked what he fucking liked, who he fucking liked. Nobody had ever apologised to him about it; why should he?

 

_if youll have me. do u want me to bring the turkey? ;)_

**Author's Note:**

> Some notes:  
> \- I started writing this on the day before Christmas Eve, but I've been too lazy and busy to finish it until now. I hope it's not too late for Christmas-themed writing.  
> \- The title is from a poem called "Acquainted With The Night" by Robert Frost, and it's really lovely.  
> \- Eric Dier was taken into hospital earlier this month to have his appendix removed, of all things. I don't know much about medicine or his condition, so you might have to suspend your disbelief a bit here.  
> \- I also am not an expert on Dele Alli's childhood home life, so those bits are probably (definitely) not historically accurate. I did the best I could with Wikipedia and a healthy dose of imagination.  
> \- As always, this is only edited by me, so if I've missed anything then please let me know.  
> \- I bet you could never guess who my favourite footballer in the Premier League is. No, really.


End file.
